T Hé All T GALLélllé5 Across the Httds0 n-] ean Lttrçat's Dottble Bill-,Pa,ints, Pastels, and the Parthenon T HE current exhibition at the Mu- seum of Modern Art filled me with vague foreboding. Painting and Sculpture from Sixteen American CIties: or what has regionalism done for art? One's chick- ens were coming home to roost. Being a good regionalist myself, I have deplored the ab- sorption of the rest of the country by Nev.' York. Are we merely a sponge? I have scoff- ed at the notion that life was any sweeter in a Fifth Avenue jam than on Main Street. I have said that the moonlight on the Wa- bash was just the same moonlight that catches the metallic bands on the top of the Empire State. [have held that America wouldn't be worth living in until there was as much art and good conversation and intelligence in Peoria as on Park Avenue-which, after all, isn't asking much. But suppose I was wrong? Suppose people had to tread on each other's feet before they could think, or stare al1 day at a dirty wall before they could en joy art? Then what? The show at the Modern Museum stil1leaves me a little uncertain. It has good spots in it, promising spots: a fine seated figure by John Storrs from Chi- cago, and an amusing painting by Rifka Angel of a little group of female art- appreciators; a good portrait of the artist's mother by Grant Wood (with, however, a feeble background), and an interesting composition by Paul Travis of Congo Negroes. And it is good to think that people can paint in Dallas without taking to the Catacombs. But what exactly did the whole show prove or illustrate? After much pondering, I am finally pretty sure of the answer. It proves that local art committees are not to be trusted. The Detroit com- mittee was intelligent enough to select John Carroll and th@ Buffalo com- mittee to show Burchfield-who spent most of his life in Ohio-but neither pictures are really first-rate examples of the artist's work. If Chicago could show Storrs, why should Philadelphia not have shown Harold Weston, and why were Stojana and Valenti Angelo left out of the California show? (Angelo's 1L C L p current work at the Ferargil Galleries shows him to be a serene and well-bal- anced painter. ) Were the provincial committees trying to show only the stay-at-homes? It is a pretty delicate question to decide when an artist belongs to a par- ticular region. I suggest that the real test is that the region should like him and be proud of him and want him-as we in New York claim La- chaise, say, for ourselves. By this test, some of the results look pretty bad. That St. Louis should not have claimed Thom- as Ben ton as a native "on of Missouri shows a low degree of either regional or aesthet- ic consciousness. Indeed, a few more pain ters like Ben ton, with a similar sense of the earth and the people and local manners, would have given this show real distinction-and relieved my mind. As it is, a good regional art- ist will probably have a better time of it by coming to New York. Every good artist we grab from the back- woods adds to the prestige of our local committee; and in New York, the aunts and the other relatives are some- how canceled out. J EAN LURÇAT opened in two gal- leries at once: a show of oils at the Valentine Gallery and one of gouaches at the Pierre Matisse Gallery. In the first show, he is obsessed by a single theme: a sailing ship going down with its sails flying. The best of these pictures is the ,large Battle of T rafalgar canvas; but although the canvases are called "Disaster at Sea" and "Battle of the Derelicts," one somehow doesn't feel that it is more than a toy tragedy in an imitation universe. Lurçat has also invented a race of microcephalous giantesses who, in some obscure way, seem to mark a step away from Sur- réalisme; but on the whole, neither the imaginative design nor the color of the oils seems as effective as his work in the smaller gouaches. The smallness of the latter seems more on a par with the themes themselves, although one of them, with human figures, might well be enlarged into a mural; then, too, the flatness of Lurçat's painting, which seems a little empty at times on a large 35 ' , U; :. 1t ' OV una Gad . ,, Vrro/ ... \V ødo - .,. )\) ' 7 your youth Úl FLORI DA It really is little more tban a hoþ, skiþ and a jumþ from New Y orl to f'lorida - fronl ice and blizzards to tumbling surf and green fairways-to tbe Emþire of Sunsbine wbere one may :fißh, swim, ride, þlay, enjoytbe races and dance in th light of a troþical moon. Lower railroad far s - higher standards of service. r\ clean ride on a Double Track, Rock Ballaßted Railroad; þrotected by auto- matic train control and signals. ,-1llolor;ng ;s fine; ('10- Jake pour aulo. /h, 100, can rt de on G rati1,oood I{ckel FQUR FAMOUS TRAINS Lv. Penna. Bta. (P. R. R.J, New York, Daily The Flor Ja Special (Eff.Jan.2) 2.30 P.M.. Gulf Coast Li:m teJ. 10.10 A.M. 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